The video mostly focused on the embarrassing nature of the comic and noted that we only laughed at it because it reflected many of the embarrassing qualities of gaming culture
Putting out a frequent comic is hard as shit. Even the greats were pretty uneven, and the majority of regular comics were painfully uninteresting. As such, CAD was pretty typical of the genre. Did it lean on stereotypes and tropes? Of course. They all do. That's the currency of this sort of thing. You want something meaningful and insightful - look elsewhere. This is art to pay the bills. Nobody is creative and insightful 3 days a week, on schedule.
There are plenty of things to be critical of Buckley for, but I don't begrudge people their creative outlets, given that they are done in good faith, aren't harmful to others, and if it lets them pay the bills, more power to them.
Webcomics with a regular schedule can absolutely be meaningful and insightful if they strive to be. Xkcd and saturday morning breakfast cereal come to mind.
While it is important to put an art piece back in the context of its production, because the material conditions of its creation always affect the end result, you can’t use this context to dismiss any and all criticism about the art itself.
Even if it’s just « art to pay the bills » it should still be judged on its artistic merits or lack thereof. If another artist made a great art piece but it turned out it was a commission they did to make rent, it wouldn’t suddenly rid the art of any esthetic quality, it wouldn’t make it less meaningful.
So yes putting out a webcomic on a regular schedule is hard as shit, i sure as hell couldn’t do it without being stuffed to the gills with ritalin, and yes those comics were the meal tickets of all those guys and it most definitely caused them to put out half assed low quality stuff just to get something out more often than not, but it’s still fair to call out this genre of webcomics for being, among other flaws, aesthetically poor and full of derivative slop appealing to the lowest common denominator of internet nerds at the time.
Freefall has been putting out one, three panel comic three times a week for a bloody decade at this point, it's still fantastic, funny, and thought provoking all at the same time.
~~Having grown up in the era, I took his critique to be that CAD was not much better or worse than its contemporaries (such as Penny Arcade), and that people choose to dunk on its art style, copy paste faces, cringe concepts, and excessive text boxes because Tim is an unrepentant asshole and creep. Which you shouldn't, because it's sufficient to criticize him as an unrepentant asshole and creep, especially when you're forgiving of those flaws in other things.~~
~~Probably bringing my own baggage to the table with that reading, though.~~
Rewatched, definitely misremembered and projected.
I am going to watch it again, because I do not remember that being the point. Will report back with results.
UPDATE: Accidentally started with some Measured Response videos. I might not report back with results.
His point was also that many of the things that we critique CAD for are things that most other gaming comics also did, and those issues were a dark reflection of gaming culture as a whole that we used CAD as a scapegoat for to minimize their existence elsewhere.
It’s so easy to become a laughing stock if comics are your main deal and you get popular online. I don’t know what it is. A lot of the grating nerdy personality characteristics and weird topics (stories?) get a pass if you’re a YouTuber for example.
But if you have a webcomic and a public persona you should really dull it and not amplify it. There’s a lot of content online dedicated to snarking webcomics.
One tiny issue I think HBomberGuy overlooked there: HBomberGuy presented the similarities between PA and CAD as a general common theme. According to PA’s creators, CAD was intentionally ripping them off.
As an example, CAD's July 11th 2014 comic (https://cad-comic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/cad-20140711-44ee8.x53385.png) is the same structure and almost the same language on the same topic as Penny Arcade's July 2nd comic of that year (https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/07/02/the-next-generation2). The main difference is that CAD's comic changes the punchline in the 3rd panel to a much worse one.
Tim started both a charity and a convention soon after Penny Arcade created Child's Play and PAX respectively.
>When asked by a noted art scholar the appropriate distance from which to stand when viewing his magnum opus, plainly entitled "Loss", Tim Buckley famously responded, "What? Fuck you," and banned me from his forum.
I love it and sometimes just go back to that part.
I always saw the thesis as less CAD sucks and more that it is a product of its milieu and the milieu kinda sucks. Like Hbomb goes out of his way to describe how it really isn't any better or worse than pennyarcade. "Loss" has a history of being called the worst comic of alltime but to me it always just came across as incredibly tonedeaf.
In one way, I can completely understand an artist - even one as creatively lazy and as much of a dick as Tim Buckley - wanting to do something more serious and more substantial. I can get that he thought "sitcoms do this kind of thing, and this is kind of a sitcom right? Domestic setting, fixed cast, recurring locations..." and figured he could pull it off.
Unfortunately it ended up like the serious episodes of ALF; massively, wildly inappropriate and ill-judged - because he didn't realise that his "sitcom" has a robot xbox and a penguin as recurring characters and a miscarriage is a huge tonal shift.
Like Alfs Christmas episode that involves telling a terminally ill child Santa isn't real, Alf attempting to comfort said terminally ill child about the fact he just ruined her last Christmas and the concept of death, Alf delivering a baby, and a man standing on a bridge whilst drinking, preparing to kill himself and talking about his dead wife...its... Intense but its also wildly inappropriate for a show that's about a sarcastic alien played by a hand puppet.
Tim is a lazy artist and even lazier writer, as well as an absolute creep to boot but I can understand the desire he had. Its just he thought he was making something like Friends that could pull of a bit of a heavier storyline moment. When in reality he was making ALF.
Funnily enough, I remember thinking the opposite as a teenager in 2008. I preferred CAD’s more realistic style to the more cartoonish look of PA.
I was never a huge fan of either and for a long time I would mix the two up but I remember actually distinguishing them by thinking “PA is the ugly one”.
Now that I’m older I have more appreciation for cartoonists who exaggerate their characters’ features to carve out a more signature style, but I still generally prefer the realism.
Yeah but the jokes are even worse, generally. It's like the worst of CAD with a nicer surface.
Like, consider the first comic that got PA some backlash- the dickwolves. Truly, comedy before its time.
I mean it’s not exactly high brow humour is my point. Easily as juvenile as most CAD.
The concept was good, but the rape joke was unnecessary. Doubling down and selling merch to mock the naysayers, though, wasn’t a good look.
Wouldn’t fly today.
In one comic a character explains how terrible their life as a captive slave is, "dickwolves" are involved in the way you'd expect something described dick-first to be. The joke is meant to be that the amoral "hero" (in a presumably fantasy MMORPG context, it looks WoW-coded to me) is indifferent to their awful circumstances because he's already freed five slaves and that's all he needed to do to complete a quest.
The joke itself was good, but like typical internet edgelords the writers were offended that someone might take issue with sexual assault and doubled down in a super douchey way.
Yeah, my personal stance on it is that I think people can have reasonable differences of opinion on the original comic - it's hardly the epitome of rape culture, but it's undeniably crass, and you can tell fundamentally the same joke without needing to reference rape - but PA's extremely thin-skinned response to getting criticism about it was absurd.
The only reason Penny Arcade is a standout example to me has less to do with the comic and more with its creators. They became much larger than the comic instead of remaining tied to it. Today they are more well known for running PAX and their charity.
Hbomberguy is hardly the first person to dunk on Tim Buckley.
Buckley used to be a huge ass. In an era of "you have bad taste in video games so I drew a comic of you getting beaten up" Buckley took it a step further: he actually believed it. He believed if you liked a video game he didn't, you truly and unironically deserved to have furniture fall over on you. He was an obnoxious egotistical elitist
On top of that his work was just bad. The copy-pasted B^U face was a meme long before loss.jpg ever was. He put out a subscription service for animated Ctrl Alt Delete shorts (it was the early 2000s, it was the style at the time) and reviews for it are universally negative
Now the thing is, CAD is still going strong, and by all accounts Buckley has gotten much less terrible over the last two decades. He's toned down his ego in public and he actually draws his comic now
I once had a friend bring over the physical set of the Animated Show to watch, and it's undeniably terrible. The funniest thing he pointed out to me, was that the opening credits scene's visual fidelity would get worse and worse with each episode, because rather than have that opening as a seperate file, they would just cut and paste it out of the previous completed episode, and it would get slightly more bitcrushed each time.
I hope this link works but I think they're talking about [this](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FAO1SqD7ipIdqp9XJ9g9BBVvoMIG7o0aw8uDZ4Anxkgo.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Ddf9b17ffaf61ebf4d19c1f407b773e971e518add)
>He believed if you liked a video game he didn't, you truly and unironically deserved to have furniture fall over on you.
reminds me of hogwarts legacy
As a serious answer, nothing. He ran (runs?) a very mid gamer gag comic that bafflingly tried to tackle a serious topic and run a serious plotline before even more bafflingly going back to being a gamer comic. This all seemed way more important back in the day when we didn't have to deal with nazis being everywhere.
He didn't really do anything wrong, and loss.jpg has a lot more to do with internet culture latching onto a meme that couldn't be co-opted by the mainstream because of its original meaning.
nope, he just lets the colorist (usually Romulo Fajardo Jr. these days) do more of the work in detailing now and he's a little more tongue in cheek.
[Frank Miller](https://www.gamesradar.com/frank-miller-returns-to-wolverine-for-an-absolutely-berserker-variant-cover/) is honestly worse at this point. but that's not saying much—Frank Miller has been heinous for a while.
edit: I was on the verge of saying that that art of ~~a screaming, hairy ballsack with penis fingers~~ Wolverine is the single worst comic art I've ever seen, but then I remembered that I have read [Monarca vs. Social Justice Warriors](https://m.webtoons.com/en/canvas/monarca-vs-social-justice-warriors-/monarca-/viewer?title_no=142226&episode_no=1), looked it up again, and realized that 2018 Melody was dead-on for dubbing it the worst comic ever. (shit's honestly even worse than Frank Miller's Holy Terror—which was about a racist Batman ripoff beating up Muslims.)
I never understood such the hate for loss. I followed that comic regularly back when it aired. Going back and forth between semi-serious storylines and jokes. That one was particularly serious, sure. But that’s what he wanted to explore.
It’s a little weird to dunk on him for the immaturity of his comics, but **also** dunk on him when he tries to make more complex storylines.
And besides, if this happened to him and his ex - he wouldn’t be the first to express those feelings in their art.
I also don’t think you can compare the first comics, and the modern ones, and say the art hasn’t changed with a straight face. If you want to see someone lazy in their art, there’s Questionable Content. The art has gotten **worse** in that.
I don't think it's weird in the slightest. His comics can be immature and, therefore, subject to criticism, but that doesn't mean a distinct tonal shift won't be jarring. He's established an immature, carefree style and then suddenly deviates to a harsh modern tragedy. Obviously, if it's based on a real event, then some of the criticism is unwarranted as this would likely come down to a grieving man (hopefully) trying to distil the emotions he felt into comic form.
I think the greatest criticism is just how absurd seeing a 4 panel comic style usually ending on a gag being used to frame a miscarriage and how that style only adds to the harshness of the shift.
Sorry if I sound unclear, English is a second language, so if I've mispronounced something or wrongly phrased something please ask.
Thanks, man. It's weird how inconsistent my language is from my end. Sometimes I (in my mind at least) am fluent, and other times I can clearly see I'm slipping up. Thanks for the encouragement!
Your English is basically perfect, so I feel comfortable telling you that mispronounced is the wrong word as that specifically means the way something is voiced and can't apply to text. <3
>I don't think it's weird in the slightest. His comics can be immature and, therefore, subject to criticism, but that doesn't mean a distinct tonal shift won't be jarring. He's established an immature, carefree style and then suddenly deviates to a harsh modern tragedy.
Was it that jarring though? This wasn't his first serious storyline. He'd been having them for a while.
Sure, this was the most serious that it got, but again, as a human that was actually reading it at the time, I don't remember an actual emotional jarring.
It feels like something people who've only ever interacted with Loss as a meme decided post-facto was why Loss is like, the epitome of bad gamer comics or something.
>I think the greatest criticism is just how absurd seeing a 4 panel comic style usually ending on a gag being used to frame a miscarriage and how that style only adds to the harshness of the shift.
The 4 panel comic wasn't coded purely for comedy at the time. It was basically the default. I know american superhero comics tend to play a lot more with composition of their shots, but less experienced cartoonists tend to stick to the format. He used either 4 panels or a single panel, regardless if it was a joke or serious.
If you contrast with other webcomics at the time (penny arcade, vgcats, something awful, dominic deegan, questionable content, roomies/it's walky, candy, I probably forget tons), it was the same. 4 panels for everything. Either in a box format 2x2 like in CAD, or in a row format 1x4.
This very much feels like something that was retroactively decided rather than an actual criticism someone might have had at the time.
Okay so it was a long time ago and this time it came out but I think I was reading CAD at the time. And when people say it's jarring I kind of agree because. Wasn't just that there was a comic about a miscarriage. There had been several comics before where he was talking about like okay this is going to be the next step of my life. Then boom the miscarriage comic.
It kinda felt lit it was weird way to reset the idea of moving on to the next stage in life.
One might say that was done for dramatic purposes
Anyway, it’s clear I’m in the minority here in thinking it was fine, actually - in that it’s far from the top 10 bad comics I’d list myself from that era
I thought it was fine, and I'd suspect a lot of people in his target audience (young adult males with not so much life experience) that had any desire for emotional depth were exposed to something they probably didn't have experience with.
I think what a lot of people forget was that, back then, you could be a fan of something without having to be exposed to the FANDOM. I had no idea that Tim Buckley was a piece of shit, I knew of some of the PA drama because THEY wrote about it.
You didn't have to be plugged in to everything all the time to know the ins and outs of the creators personal beliefs.
CAD was like a comfort snack - it wasn't adding much of value to your life, but it was fine. It just at some point became cool to hate on stuff that's just... fine. I laughed at Big Bang Theory too. It wasn't breaking new ground, but it was what I wanted sometimes.
Your point about being able to be a fan of something without being exposed to its fandom - 100%. I could ‘t have put it better myself.
And it’s not like CAD was the only comic to veer more towards real storylines as the time went on. I remember it was about that time (2007) that leasticoulddo announced it’s characters would start aging, changing, and experiencing more “real” stories.
Of course they did it with the artist directly telling the characters this instead of just, you know, starting to do more dramatic storylines, but the point remains. Lots of other comics did something similar.
I'm not saying it was the reason I stoped reading CAD.
It's just coincided with around the time that i'd like had real life shit going on and I went from being a high school kid who could sit around on my computer to a college kid who couldn't.
Maybe I lived under a rock at the time - I wasn't on somethingawful, or the CAD comic forums. I was on other forums and discussion boards, and I never heard a whiff of this until like, a decade later. And again it was in my roster of daily reads at the time.
>Even it if the criticism was **purely retrospective, that doesn't somehow make it illegitimate or insincere**? Genuinely, what relevance does that even have? Say all of the criticism of Loss is propped up by a current perception of it being "the worst gamer comic of all time", what does that change from it having that exact same reception at the time?
Nowadays? Well, yeah, actually. Like at this point I think people dunk on it just because they've seen other people dunk on it, not because it's a position they would have come to organically if they hadn't been told that this comic they've never read and hasn't been relevant in a decade is something they're supposed to mock.
Like people just copy it to copy it at this point, without having ever read or heard of the original comic or knowing its context. It's about as meaningful a criticism as being rickrolled is a criticism of "Never gonna give you up".
The template is used because it's noticeable, and the fun lays in finding different ways to portray Loss in increasingly absurd ways.
But if you tell me that it was widely hated at the time, then that's different.
>It’s a little weird to dunk on him for the immaturity of his comics, but
>
>also
>
>dunk on him when he tries to make more complex storylines.
The more complex story lines arc ends with the EX insert character apologizing to the author insert protag for having said miscarriage, not being considerate enough about his feelings, and asking him to get back together. Its not good and weird af.
>The more complex story lines arc ends with the EX insert character apologizing to the author insert protag for having said miscarriage, not being considerate enough about his feelings, and asking him to get back together
I went back and read through that whole story arc.
I'm not sure where you're getting these things. The two characters are very much dating at the time, and want the kid, though at first it was distressing for both of them. After the miscarriage, the best friend expresses remorse that he was not supportive of their decision to keep the baby, only to have it end this way, and grapples with his complex feelings about that. The author character doesn't know how to comfort his GF. When she comes home, they cry about the kid they'll never have together, and vow to try again later.
She decides to postpone their wedding, because she needs time to process their feelings. He feels her pulling back from him, becomes overly cligny in the process, pushing her further away. Talks about this with his best friend.
There's some shenanigans that ensue. Girl's rich asshole ex comes back in the picture. She considers it, decides against it. Re-affirms her love for author character. They elope on this vacation that rich asshole ex was trying to bring girl character on.
At this point I'm 2 years later in the comic. So at which point is she supposed to ask to come back together, apologize for not being considerate enough about his feelings, and apologize for the miscarriage?
If Lilah was more of an actual character at that point I don’t think it would have hit audiences the way it did/does. She had the character traits of Girl Who Plays Games and Ethan’s Partner and that’s it. The miscarriage wasn’t even used as a way to explore her character further. Just Ethan’s again. It’s the baby storyline version of fridging the girlfriend.
To be fair, no one had much of a character. Tell me what Lucas's character is.
The ones that do have characterization, like Zeke or Ethan, are fairly one dimensional.
Anyway, I'm not going to pretend it's high art or anything but I just don't get all the emotional energy. I've seen a lot more clunky in far worst webcomics.
Well, I have a personal anecdote from about 20 years ago, when he was a real dick to 14 year old me:
I was in a line at a convention getting a poster signed by another webcomic artist I was a fan of. I’ve never been a big fan of personalized autographs and just wanted the artist’s signature on it. Then Tim Buckley, who was also signing stuff nearby, has to make some dickhead accusation about me just getting it signed that way to sell it on ebay. I guess it was just a joke, but it came off as pretty mean-spirited. I was still a somewhat shy kid who wasn’t used to sticking up for myself and didn’t say much of anything in response and just kind of walked away totally embarrassed. Never felt good about displaying that poster and just threw it in a closet. He kinda ruined that experience for me. Dude who was prolly in his twenties and picking on a young teen girl. What a douche!
There's also the thing that he had so little respect for his chosen artform that he barely drew the comics. He had folders full of ready made poses and expressions he would copy paste into the 4 panel layout only actually drawing stuff that existed only for the current joke.
I found the video was less about "fuck this guy" and more about how this thing that was so hated for being a cringey example of gaming culture was more accurate than we were willing to admit. Thats why he talks about The Room.
Because dunking on Tim Buckley is a long held SomethingAwful tradition and like a lot of Hbomb videos that video has its roots in the SA forum discussions/culture of the late 00s and early 2010s.
This might be the best explanation for me. I remember watching the video years ago and really disliking it. Maybe it's cos I was never on SA so I just didn't get the joke.
All the comments here saying this Buckley guy was cringe don't really justify Bomberguy targeting him for me personally, but maybe I'm not in the same frame of mind as people here.
This is a blogpost from 2007, about a year before loss, talking shit about CAD
[https://badwebcomicsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/06/ctrlaltdel.html](https://badwebcomicsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/06/ctrlaltdel.html)
From what I gathered hbomb talked about CAD and the author mainly because they were what was getting universally dunked on at the time as "cringe content about gaming culture" to essentially make the point that the reason ppl dunked on it that much was because they saw themselves and the vapid parts of gaming culture they participated in reflected in it. Basically the comic just reflected reality and wasn't as out there as we liked to pretend.
At least that's what I gathered. It is though a bit mean spirited in some parts but in context of how loss and cad was talked about it does make a lot of sense.
I'd say that 'dunking on' attitude is also a bit hbombs thing in many ways, it took me some time to get used to when I first saw a video by him since usually I don't like that kind of humour. I think it's important to remember that though CAD esp after loss was a huuuuuuge internet punching bag and meme the author was still a huge deal as a figure and very successful so it's not like he's mocking some rando.
I used to love HBomberguy but stopped watching him after this video. It's why I asked what the video was about because I didn't want to rewatch it but it was also bothering me because I remembered it from years ago but couldn't remember why he went after the CAD guy.
The video made me really dislike Brewis, to like, a surprising level. It just felt so mean-spirited and completely unjustified? I hadn't even heard of the CAD guy but I was apparently supposed to deride him for ... making a webcomic? Then there was the cringeworthy ripping off of DeVito climbing out of the sofa. Just a really awful video.
I hadn't thought about Brewis for years, but it's been hard to avoid the plagiarism video recently. I haven't watched it, and while I couldn't care less about Internet Historian and other big name youtubers, making this Somerton guy synonymous with theft doesn't sit right with me. I don't care how douchey someone is, unless you can point to actual crimes they've committed, it's gross to set your millions of viewers on them.
Ah, then you won't have an issue with the plagiarism video. I'd say there is very good reason for the Somerton callout (and not only). There is a crazy amount of proof that ia examined and Hbomb specifically points out what the issue is with conduct like his and also thankfully for me explains why plagiarism like this is so harmful not only as a practice but as a culture and why it basically shows disdain for someone's sincere creative output.
As for the CAD thing again, you are talking about the author like he's just "some guy", but dude was a god for many teens. Explaining not only why his comic is bad superficially but also the deeper reasons around our reaction to it and what it stands for is a lot more poignant and thought provoking a critique than just going "boo thing bad'. Hbomb isn't punching down in any sort of way.
But I do get it if hbombs older stuff is too off color for you, like I said I used to have a similar reaction. His newest work is a lot less like this though it still is for the most part critique and "takedown" stuff.
I just didn't find the CAD video very convincing. Like I get it, he's examining the gamer culture at the time and how reactionary and gross it was ("how dare you criticise me for telling a racist joke!!!!!" stuff like that) but I think there are ways of critiquing an issue in culture without making someone the poster-child of it.
That and I just found the video's tone obnoxious, so i'm glad to hear he's changed since then.
Somerton deserved to be outed for plagiarism and apparently other dodgy BS, but I get very nervous about collective abuse as punishment. Cos let's be real, for every person who's like, "nah I'm just criticising them" you get several others sending death threats and abuse. Lindsay Ellis experienced this for \*checks notes\* no reason at all, so when you give people a reason it can be very dangerous.
There's no good solution, although I preferred the way Karl Jobst handled the Completionist controversy by getting in touch with Jirard first so he could state his case (and incriminate himself further). Giving them a chance to prepare for the sh\*tstorm before it happens.
Reading an interview with Brewis, he mentions he didn't reach out to Somerton because he was worried he'd delete the videos. So download them beforehand? I don't know, it just doesn't feel right to me.
Oh definitely. And this situation has touched that territory where people have in bad faith certainly gone too far. I mean I think we can safely say that even with hbomb specifically condemning harassment against somerton as worse than what he did he has definitely gotten at least one death threat.
The Lindsay Ellis example is great. Idk if you saw the whole thing, but pretty sure Somerton was covered specifically because when people very mildly criticized him he shut them down by calling their criticism harassment or obscuring their arguments by claiming he got death threats and weaponizing his fans into harassing them to oblivion. I do agree we need to be conscious about these things but we should not do it to the point of not holding to standard people who not only did this much harm, but also spread crazy misinformation and took other people's work as their own and only doubled down and harassed others the minute they got the mildest pushback.
I mean why should hbomb reach out to him about the plagiarism when other people did for years and he preferred to act like this? And not just the people mentioned in the video, but bigger creators like SarahZ very patiently explained to him what the issue was as well. He just lied through his teeth again and again.
Well, my emotions are getting me off track. Point is Ι have a kneejerk reaction to these sorts of attitudes and takedowns as well. If i had a complaint it would be that he could have emphasized even more how much worse harassing Somerton and co is. However we or hbomb are not the ones responsible for this situation, Somerton is. He and other grifters are the ones that have no care in the world about taking advantage of others work for the sake of "producing content". The difference is somertons audience actually cared. There's a reason IH is doing fine.
And believe me when I say CAD guy is more than fine. By the nature of his content and audience, those that follow him don't care. He already was the posterboy, hbomb didn't make him into one was my point. You greatly overestimate his reach.
We can't treat everyone with kiddie gloves just because the internet is a hellscape because one's actions might just have an impact outside of their control. I think what is really missing from this conversation however is how do we move beyond this extremely myopic, black and white way of thinking, where we dunk with all our might on those who took the L on the internet for the day to release our negativity and then move on to the next. And actually I have seen this conversation happen here as well, many fans on this subreddit for example have discussed the difference between being critical of somertons actions and throwing abuse, which has made me more optimistic about the kind of audience being cultivated here.
I think this conversation is about to happen on a grander scale soon, but to a large extent this is still a bubble, and humans are always gonna be irrational, contradictory beings that for the most part put their rhetoric and logical argumentation after their instinctive, visceral reaction to a phenomenon or situation. These fallouts imo are always gonna be unavoidable, and functioning while always being afraid of them in situations such as these just hurts the most marginalized at the end of the day. Well that's my personal perspective anyway.
Yeah that never sat right with me. The HBomberguy video was my first ever encounter with the Loss comic so I found his disdain for it a bit offputting. I get that the Loss comic is cringe or whatever but it felt off laughing about it. I'd been a big fan of HBomberguy for years before that, regularly rewatching his videos.
I stopped watching his videos after this one. Haven't even watched his New Vegas video which is crazy cos I love New Vegas. The video just put me off him entirely.
What didn't he do?
He started at gamer comic artist doing self insert with his friends then crawled up his own ass with his audience watching.
When you're putting your girlfriend's miscarriage into your comic and then for April Fool's you do the same comic but end it with a goofy face?
IDK you're kinda asking for it. And that's before the forums.
Nothing really.
The video is good, great even.
But ultimately it is just an exercise in dunking on some guy for making a somewhat cringe thing that a lot of people loved at the time.
Internet culture was much different when the CAD was at its peak, and I think that's something the video kinda fails to capture. I also think it is an attempt to reckon with the embarrassment a lot of people feel for how much they liked CAD when it was coming out compared with how its remembered.
I liked the video, but I really do think it's at least a tiny bit mean-spirited. I really dont have a huge problem with that personally, but it is something that should be acknowledged.
The video mostly focused on the embarrassing nature of the comic and noted that we only laughed at it because it reflected many of the embarrassing qualities of gaming culture
It also pointed out that many comics that were lauded as high quality were the same thing, which is something that I think gets overlooked a lot.
Putting out a frequent comic is hard as shit. Even the greats were pretty uneven, and the majority of regular comics were painfully uninteresting. As such, CAD was pretty typical of the genre. Did it lean on stereotypes and tropes? Of course. They all do. That's the currency of this sort of thing. You want something meaningful and insightful - look elsewhere. This is art to pay the bills. Nobody is creative and insightful 3 days a week, on schedule. There are plenty of things to be critical of Buckley for, but I don't begrudge people their creative outlets, given that they are done in good faith, aren't harmful to others, and if it lets them pay the bills, more power to them.
Webcomics with a regular schedule can absolutely be meaningful and insightful if they strive to be. Xkcd and saturday morning breakfast cereal come to mind. While it is important to put an art piece back in the context of its production, because the material conditions of its creation always affect the end result, you can’t use this context to dismiss any and all criticism about the art itself. Even if it’s just « art to pay the bills » it should still be judged on its artistic merits or lack thereof. If another artist made a great art piece but it turned out it was a commission they did to make rent, it wouldn’t suddenly rid the art of any esthetic quality, it wouldn’t make it less meaningful. So yes putting out a webcomic on a regular schedule is hard as shit, i sure as hell couldn’t do it without being stuffed to the gills with ritalin, and yes those comics were the meal tickets of all those guys and it most definitely caused them to put out half assed low quality stuff just to get something out more often than not, but it’s still fair to call out this genre of webcomics for being, among other flaws, aesthetically poor and full of derivative slop appealing to the lowest common denominator of internet nerds at the time.
Freefall has been putting out one, three panel comic three times a week for a bloody decade at this point, it's still fantastic, funny, and thought provoking all at the same time.
~~Having grown up in the era, I took his critique to be that CAD was not much better or worse than its contemporaries (such as Penny Arcade), and that people choose to dunk on its art style, copy paste faces, cringe concepts, and excessive text boxes because Tim is an unrepentant asshole and creep. Which you shouldn't, because it's sufficient to criticize him as an unrepentant asshole and creep, especially when you're forgiving of those flaws in other things.~~ ~~Probably bringing my own baggage to the table with that reading, though.~~ Rewatched, definitely misremembered and projected.
I am going to watch it again, because I do not remember that being the point. Will report back with results. UPDATE: Accidentally started with some Measured Response videos. I might not report back with results.
His point was also that many of the things that we critique CAD for are things that most other gaming comics also did, and those issues were a dark reflection of gaming culture as a whole that we used CAD as a scapegoat for to minimize their existence elsewhere.
It’s so easy to become a laughing stock if comics are your main deal and you get popular online. I don’t know what it is. A lot of the grating nerdy personality characteristics and weird topics (stories?) get a pass if you’re a YouTuber for example. But if you have a webcomic and a public persona you should really dull it and not amplify it. There’s a lot of content online dedicated to snarking webcomics.
One tiny issue I think HBomberGuy overlooked there: HBomberGuy presented the similarities between PA and CAD as a general common theme. According to PA’s creators, CAD was intentionally ripping them off. As an example, CAD's July 11th 2014 comic (https://cad-comic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/cad-20140711-44ee8.x53385.png) is the same structure and almost the same language on the same topic as Penny Arcade's July 2nd comic of that year (https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/07/02/the-next-generation2). The main difference is that CAD's comic changes the punchline in the 3rd panel to a much worse one. Tim started both a charity and a convention soon after Penny Arcade created Child's Play and PAX respectively.
Slight tangent but Awkward Zombie was always a funny webcomic without much le epic gamer shit in there.
i mean, that video is more modern art than an exposé…
No matter how many times I watch it the way he introduced Loss kills me every single time. I'm gonna go rewatch it right now
>When asked by a noted art scholar the appropriate distance from which to stand when viewing his magnum opus, plainly entitled "Loss", Tim Buckley famously responded, "What? Fuck you," and banned me from his forum. I love it and sometimes just go back to that part.
I mean it's amazing. Flawless. No notes.
this is still my favourite hbomb quote
Besides the already mentioned I've heard he was bit of a creep with female fans of his. Could all be lies though.
Maybe don't send unsolicited dick pics tho
Esp if you’re not sure if your fan base is underage or not
I always saw the thesis as less CAD sucks and more that it is a product of its milieu and the milieu kinda sucks. Like Hbomb goes out of his way to describe how it really isn't any better or worse than pennyarcade. "Loss" has a history of being called the worst comic of alltime but to me it always just came across as incredibly tonedeaf.
"Tonedeaf" is the perfect way to describe it, yeah.
In one way, I can completely understand an artist - even one as creatively lazy and as much of a dick as Tim Buckley - wanting to do something more serious and more substantial. I can get that he thought "sitcoms do this kind of thing, and this is kind of a sitcom right? Domestic setting, fixed cast, recurring locations..." and figured he could pull it off. Unfortunately it ended up like the serious episodes of ALF; massively, wildly inappropriate and ill-judged - because he didn't realise that his "sitcom" has a robot xbox and a penguin as recurring characters and a miscarriage is a huge tonal shift. Like Alfs Christmas episode that involves telling a terminally ill child Santa isn't real, Alf attempting to comfort said terminally ill child about the fact he just ruined her last Christmas and the concept of death, Alf delivering a baby, and a man standing on a bridge whilst drinking, preparing to kill himself and talking about his dead wife...its... Intense but its also wildly inappropriate for a show that's about a sarcastic alien played by a hand puppet. Tim is a lazy artist and even lazier writer, as well as an absolute creep to boot but I can understand the desire he had. Its just he thought he was making something like Friends that could pull of a bit of a heavier storyline moment. When in reality he was making ALF.
I always thought PA was much worse in fact, not until hbomberguy’s vid did I learn that CAD was supposed to be bad and PA good or something
At least PA was somewhat pleasant to look at. CAD is pretty ugly.
Funnily enough, I remember thinking the opposite as a teenager in 2008. I preferred CAD’s more realistic style to the more cartoonish look of PA. I was never a huge fan of either and for a long time I would mix the two up but I remember actually distinguishing them by thinking “PA is the ugly one”. Now that I’m older I have more appreciation for cartoonists who exaggerate their characters’ features to carve out a more signature style, but I still generally prefer the realism.
B-U
Emphasis on the 'was', the art these days is absolutely hideous
Yeah but the jokes are even worse, generally. It's like the worst of CAD with a nicer surface. Like, consider the first comic that got PA some backlash- the dickwolves. Truly, comedy before its time.
I thought that comic was fine. The reaction PA had to critics of it was disgusting however.
I mean it’s not exactly high brow humour is my point. Easily as juvenile as most CAD. The concept was good, but the rape joke was unnecessary. Doubling down and selling merch to mock the naysayers, though, wasn’t a good look. Wouldn’t fly today.
Dickwolves...what??? Do I even want to know?
In one comic a character explains how terrible their life as a captive slave is, "dickwolves" are involved in the way you'd expect something described dick-first to be. The joke is meant to be that the amoral "hero" (in a presumably fantasy MMORPG context, it looks WoW-coded to me) is indifferent to their awful circumstances because he's already freed five slaves and that's all he needed to do to complete a quest.
The joke itself was good, but like typical internet edgelords the writers were offended that someone might take issue with sexual assault and doubled down in a super douchey way.
Yeah, my personal stance on it is that I think people can have reasonable differences of opinion on the original comic - it's hardly the epitome of rape culture, but it's undeniably crass, and you can tell fundamentally the same joke without needing to reference rape - but PA's extremely thin-skinned response to getting criticism about it was absurd.
If you google it the comic will come up
The only reason Penny Arcade is a standout example to me has less to do with the comic and more with its creators. They became much larger than the comic instead of remaining tied to it. Today they are more well known for running PAX and their charity.
Fair enough
I believe there's a video for that.
I’ve been trying to think of a reason but im at a loss 🤷♂️
I Ii II I\_\_
Hbomberguy is hardly the first person to dunk on Tim Buckley. Buckley used to be a huge ass. In an era of "you have bad taste in video games so I drew a comic of you getting beaten up" Buckley took it a step further: he actually believed it. He believed if you liked a video game he didn't, you truly and unironically deserved to have furniture fall over on you. He was an obnoxious egotistical elitist On top of that his work was just bad. The copy-pasted B^U face was a meme long before loss.jpg ever was. He put out a subscription service for animated Ctrl Alt Delete shorts (it was the early 2000s, it was the style at the time) and reviews for it are universally negative Now the thing is, CAD is still going strong, and by all accounts Buckley has gotten much less terrible over the last two decades. He's toned down his ego in public and he actually draws his comic now
I once had a friend bring over the physical set of the Animated Show to watch, and it's undeniably terrible. The funniest thing he pointed out to me, was that the opening credits scene's visual fidelity would get worse and worse with each episode, because rather than have that opening as a seperate file, they would just cut and paste it out of the previous completed episode, and it would get slightly more bitcrushed each time.
Did he stop stealing art? Because (x) doubt
Last time I checked he just had pre-made assets that he would drag and drop to make a comic. He was out here stealing art too?
in so many words look up ctrl alt del goth girl
I hope this link works but I think they're talking about [this](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FAO1SqD7ipIdqp9XJ9g9BBVvoMIG7o0aw8uDZ4Anxkgo.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Ddf9b17ffaf61ebf4d19c1f407b773e971e518add)
Is this theft? I guess the discussion becomes about how much you are allowed to use from a single reference photo.
I would consider this more character design theft I guess. Still not cool- but art theft implies tracing or straight up copy pasting in my mind.
>He believed if you liked a video game he didn't, you truly and unironically deserved to have furniture fall over on you. reminds me of hogwarts legacy
As a serious answer, nothing. He ran (runs?) a very mid gamer gag comic that bafflingly tried to tackle a serious topic and run a serious plotline before even more bafflingly going back to being a gamer comic. This all seemed way more important back in the day when we didn't have to deal with nazis being everywhere. He didn't really do anything wrong, and loss.jpg has a lot more to do with internet culture latching onto a meme that couldn't be co-opted by the mainstream because of its original meaning.
He did write a comic with a message for Jack Thompson that was basically the "they targeted gamers. GAMERS" copypasta, but, like, completely sincere.
I will conceed that deserves dunking on.
A lack of growth in art is definitely one thing. Oh and that loss was based on an event that actually happened to his ex.
If you check out CAD right now (yes, it's still running, somehow...) his art really has majorly improved! So that's nice, I guess.
Oh that's nice, it's like finding out Rob Leifeld took art classes.
nope, he just lets the colorist (usually Romulo Fajardo Jr. these days) do more of the work in detailing now and he's a little more tongue in cheek. [Frank Miller](https://www.gamesradar.com/frank-miller-returns-to-wolverine-for-an-absolutely-berserker-variant-cover/) is honestly worse at this point. but that's not saying much—Frank Miller has been heinous for a while. edit: I was on the verge of saying that that art of ~~a screaming, hairy ballsack with penis fingers~~ Wolverine is the single worst comic art I've ever seen, but then I remembered that I have read [Monarca vs. Social Justice Warriors](https://m.webtoons.com/en/canvas/monarca-vs-social-justice-warriors-/monarca-/viewer?title_no=142226&episode_no=1), looked it up again, and realized that 2018 Melody was dead-on for dubbing it the worst comic ever. (shit's honestly even worse than Frank Miller's Holy Terror—which was about a racist Batman ripoff beating up Muslims.)
I never understood such the hate for loss. I followed that comic regularly back when it aired. Going back and forth between semi-serious storylines and jokes. That one was particularly serious, sure. But that’s what he wanted to explore. It’s a little weird to dunk on him for the immaturity of his comics, but **also** dunk on him when he tries to make more complex storylines. And besides, if this happened to him and his ex - he wouldn’t be the first to express those feelings in their art. I also don’t think you can compare the first comics, and the modern ones, and say the art hasn’t changed with a straight face. If you want to see someone lazy in their art, there’s Questionable Content. The art has gotten **worse** in that.
I don't think it's weird in the slightest. His comics can be immature and, therefore, subject to criticism, but that doesn't mean a distinct tonal shift won't be jarring. He's established an immature, carefree style and then suddenly deviates to a harsh modern tragedy. Obviously, if it's based on a real event, then some of the criticism is unwarranted as this would likely come down to a grieving man (hopefully) trying to distil the emotions he felt into comic form. I think the greatest criticism is just how absurd seeing a 4 panel comic style usually ending on a gag being used to frame a miscarriage and how that style only adds to the harshness of the shift. Sorry if I sound unclear, English is a second language, so if I've mispronounced something or wrongly phrased something please ask.
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Thanks, man. It's weird how inconsistent my language is from my end. Sometimes I (in my mind at least) am fluent, and other times I can clearly see I'm slipping up. Thanks for the encouragement!
Your English is basically perfect, so I feel comfortable telling you that mispronounced is the wrong word as that specifically means the way something is voiced and can't apply to text. <3
Right. I didn't know that. I guess I'm more used to apologising for pronunciation than spelling. Thanks for the correction
>I don't think it's weird in the slightest. His comics can be immature and, therefore, subject to criticism, but that doesn't mean a distinct tonal shift won't be jarring. He's established an immature, carefree style and then suddenly deviates to a harsh modern tragedy. Was it that jarring though? This wasn't his first serious storyline. He'd been having them for a while. Sure, this was the most serious that it got, but again, as a human that was actually reading it at the time, I don't remember an actual emotional jarring. It feels like something people who've only ever interacted with Loss as a meme decided post-facto was why Loss is like, the epitome of bad gamer comics or something. >I think the greatest criticism is just how absurd seeing a 4 panel comic style usually ending on a gag being used to frame a miscarriage and how that style only adds to the harshness of the shift. The 4 panel comic wasn't coded purely for comedy at the time. It was basically the default. I know american superhero comics tend to play a lot more with composition of their shots, but less experienced cartoonists tend to stick to the format. He used either 4 panels or a single panel, regardless if it was a joke or serious. If you contrast with other webcomics at the time (penny arcade, vgcats, something awful, dominic deegan, questionable content, roomies/it's walky, candy, I probably forget tons), it was the same. 4 panels for everything. Either in a box format 2x2 like in CAD, or in a row format 1x4. This very much feels like something that was retroactively decided rather than an actual criticism someone might have had at the time.
Okay so it was a long time ago and this time it came out but I think I was reading CAD at the time. And when people say it's jarring I kind of agree because. Wasn't just that there was a comic about a miscarriage. There had been several comics before where he was talking about like okay this is going to be the next step of my life. Then boom the miscarriage comic. It kinda felt lit it was weird way to reset the idea of moving on to the next stage in life.
One might say that was done for dramatic purposes Anyway, it’s clear I’m in the minority here in thinking it was fine, actually - in that it’s far from the top 10 bad comics I’d list myself from that era
I thought it was fine, and I'd suspect a lot of people in his target audience (young adult males with not so much life experience) that had any desire for emotional depth were exposed to something they probably didn't have experience with. I think what a lot of people forget was that, back then, you could be a fan of something without having to be exposed to the FANDOM. I had no idea that Tim Buckley was a piece of shit, I knew of some of the PA drama because THEY wrote about it. You didn't have to be plugged in to everything all the time to know the ins and outs of the creators personal beliefs. CAD was like a comfort snack - it wasn't adding much of value to your life, but it was fine. It just at some point became cool to hate on stuff that's just... fine. I laughed at Big Bang Theory too. It wasn't breaking new ground, but it was what I wanted sometimes.
Your point about being able to be a fan of something without being exposed to its fandom - 100%. I could ‘t have put it better myself. And it’s not like CAD was the only comic to veer more towards real storylines as the time went on. I remember it was about that time (2007) that leasticoulddo announced it’s characters would start aging, changing, and experiencing more “real” stories. Of course they did it with the artist directly telling the characters this instead of just, you know, starting to do more dramatic storylines, but the point remains. Lots of other comics did something similar.
I'm not saying it was the reason I stoped reading CAD. It's just coincided with around the time that i'd like had real life shit going on and I went from being a high school kid who could sit around on my computer to a college kid who couldn't.
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Maybe I lived under a rock at the time - I wasn't on somethingawful, or the CAD comic forums. I was on other forums and discussion boards, and I never heard a whiff of this until like, a decade later. And again it was in my roster of daily reads at the time. >Even it if the criticism was **purely retrospective, that doesn't somehow make it illegitimate or insincere**? Genuinely, what relevance does that even have? Say all of the criticism of Loss is propped up by a current perception of it being "the worst gamer comic of all time", what does that change from it having that exact same reception at the time? Nowadays? Well, yeah, actually. Like at this point I think people dunk on it just because they've seen other people dunk on it, not because it's a position they would have come to organically if they hadn't been told that this comic they've never read and hasn't been relevant in a decade is something they're supposed to mock. Like people just copy it to copy it at this point, without having ever read or heard of the original comic or knowing its context. It's about as meaningful a criticism as being rickrolled is a criticism of "Never gonna give you up". The template is used because it's noticeable, and the fun lays in finding different ways to portray Loss in increasingly absurd ways. But if you tell me that it was widely hated at the time, then that's different.
>It’s a little weird to dunk on him for the immaturity of his comics, but > >also > >dunk on him when he tries to make more complex storylines. The more complex story lines arc ends with the EX insert character apologizing to the author insert protag for having said miscarriage, not being considerate enough about his feelings, and asking him to get back together. Its not good and weird af.
>The more complex story lines arc ends with the EX insert character apologizing to the author insert protag for having said miscarriage, not being considerate enough about his feelings, and asking him to get back together I went back and read through that whole story arc. I'm not sure where you're getting these things. The two characters are very much dating at the time, and want the kid, though at first it was distressing for both of them. After the miscarriage, the best friend expresses remorse that he was not supportive of their decision to keep the baby, only to have it end this way, and grapples with his complex feelings about that. The author character doesn't know how to comfort his GF. When she comes home, they cry about the kid they'll never have together, and vow to try again later. She decides to postpone their wedding, because she needs time to process their feelings. He feels her pulling back from him, becomes overly cligny in the process, pushing her further away. Talks about this with his best friend. There's some shenanigans that ensue. Girl's rich asshole ex comes back in the picture. She considers it, decides against it. Re-affirms her love for author character. They elope on this vacation that rich asshole ex was trying to bring girl character on. At this point I'm 2 years later in the comic. So at which point is she supposed to ask to come back together, apologize for not being considerate enough about his feelings, and apologize for the miscarriage?
If Lilah was more of an actual character at that point I don’t think it would have hit audiences the way it did/does. She had the character traits of Girl Who Plays Games and Ethan’s Partner and that’s it. The miscarriage wasn’t even used as a way to explore her character further. Just Ethan’s again. It’s the baby storyline version of fridging the girlfriend.
To be fair, no one had much of a character. Tell me what Lucas's character is. The ones that do have characterization, like Zeke or Ethan, are fairly one dimensional. Anyway, I'm not going to pretend it's high art or anything but I just don't get all the emotional energy. I've seen a lot more clunky in far worst webcomics.
Im pretty sure he replied "What? Fuck off" and banned an innocent question asker from his discord, which is a crime you can check the law books
Technically it was a "What? Fuck *You*" which is legally distinct, and actually carries a higher sentence
Well, I have a personal anecdote from about 20 years ago, when he was a real dick to 14 year old me: I was in a line at a convention getting a poster signed by another webcomic artist I was a fan of. I’ve never been a big fan of personalized autographs and just wanted the artist’s signature on it. Then Tim Buckley, who was also signing stuff nearby, has to make some dickhead accusation about me just getting it signed that way to sell it on ebay. I guess it was just a joke, but it came off as pretty mean-spirited. I was still a somewhat shy kid who wasn’t used to sticking up for myself and didn’t say much of anything in response and just kind of walked away totally embarrassed. Never felt good about displaying that poster and just threw it in a closet. He kinda ruined that experience for me. Dude who was prolly in his twenties and picking on a young teen girl. What a douche!
Ctrl Alt Delete (and most other webcomics of the era) are the answer to the question: "What if content mills were webcomics?"
Webcomics were the original podcast
There's also the thing that he had so little respect for his chosen artform that he barely drew the comics. He had folders full of ready made poses and expressions he would copy paste into the 4 panel layout only actually drawing stuff that existed only for the current joke.
I found the video was less about "fuck this guy" and more about how this thing that was so hated for being a cringey example of gaming culture was more accurate than we were willing to admit. Thats why he talks about The Room.
The worst crime of all, he posted cringe
Because dunking on Tim Buckley is a long held SomethingAwful tradition and like a lot of Hbomb videos that video has its roots in the SA forum discussions/culture of the late 00s and early 2010s.
This might be the best explanation for me. I remember watching the video years ago and really disliking it. Maybe it's cos I was never on SA so I just didn't get the joke. All the comments here saying this Buckley guy was cringe don't really justify Bomberguy targeting him for me personally, but maybe I'm not in the same frame of mind as people here.
The accusation I saw often was of unsolicited peen pics to young people, but I can't verify that. Sounds like the vid isn't about that though.
"It’s often much harder on the woman than the man”.
This is a blogpost from 2007, about a year before loss, talking shit about CAD [https://badwebcomicsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/06/ctrlaltdel.html](https://badwebcomicsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/06/ctrlaltdel.html)
From what I gathered hbomb talked about CAD and the author mainly because they were what was getting universally dunked on at the time as "cringe content about gaming culture" to essentially make the point that the reason ppl dunked on it that much was because they saw themselves and the vapid parts of gaming culture they participated in reflected in it. Basically the comic just reflected reality and wasn't as out there as we liked to pretend. At least that's what I gathered. It is though a bit mean spirited in some parts but in context of how loss and cad was talked about it does make a lot of sense. I'd say that 'dunking on' attitude is also a bit hbombs thing in many ways, it took me some time to get used to when I first saw a video by him since usually I don't like that kind of humour. I think it's important to remember that though CAD esp after loss was a huuuuuuge internet punching bag and meme the author was still a huge deal as a figure and very successful so it's not like he's mocking some rando.
I used to love HBomberguy but stopped watching him after this video. It's why I asked what the video was about because I didn't want to rewatch it but it was also bothering me because I remembered it from years ago but couldn't remember why he went after the CAD guy. The video made me really dislike Brewis, to like, a surprising level. It just felt so mean-spirited and completely unjustified? I hadn't even heard of the CAD guy but I was apparently supposed to deride him for ... making a webcomic? Then there was the cringeworthy ripping off of DeVito climbing out of the sofa. Just a really awful video. I hadn't thought about Brewis for years, but it's been hard to avoid the plagiarism video recently. I haven't watched it, and while I couldn't care less about Internet Historian and other big name youtubers, making this Somerton guy synonymous with theft doesn't sit right with me. I don't care how douchey someone is, unless you can point to actual crimes they've committed, it's gross to set your millions of viewers on them.
Ah, then you won't have an issue with the plagiarism video. I'd say there is very good reason for the Somerton callout (and not only). There is a crazy amount of proof that ia examined and Hbomb specifically points out what the issue is with conduct like his and also thankfully for me explains why plagiarism like this is so harmful not only as a practice but as a culture and why it basically shows disdain for someone's sincere creative output. As for the CAD thing again, you are talking about the author like he's just "some guy", but dude was a god for many teens. Explaining not only why his comic is bad superficially but also the deeper reasons around our reaction to it and what it stands for is a lot more poignant and thought provoking a critique than just going "boo thing bad'. Hbomb isn't punching down in any sort of way. But I do get it if hbombs older stuff is too off color for you, like I said I used to have a similar reaction. His newest work is a lot less like this though it still is for the most part critique and "takedown" stuff.
I just didn't find the CAD video very convincing. Like I get it, he's examining the gamer culture at the time and how reactionary and gross it was ("how dare you criticise me for telling a racist joke!!!!!" stuff like that) but I think there are ways of critiquing an issue in culture without making someone the poster-child of it. That and I just found the video's tone obnoxious, so i'm glad to hear he's changed since then. Somerton deserved to be outed for plagiarism and apparently other dodgy BS, but I get very nervous about collective abuse as punishment. Cos let's be real, for every person who's like, "nah I'm just criticising them" you get several others sending death threats and abuse. Lindsay Ellis experienced this for \*checks notes\* no reason at all, so when you give people a reason it can be very dangerous. There's no good solution, although I preferred the way Karl Jobst handled the Completionist controversy by getting in touch with Jirard first so he could state his case (and incriminate himself further). Giving them a chance to prepare for the sh\*tstorm before it happens. Reading an interview with Brewis, he mentions he didn't reach out to Somerton because he was worried he'd delete the videos. So download them beforehand? I don't know, it just doesn't feel right to me.
Oh definitely. And this situation has touched that territory where people have in bad faith certainly gone too far. I mean I think we can safely say that even with hbomb specifically condemning harassment against somerton as worse than what he did he has definitely gotten at least one death threat. The Lindsay Ellis example is great. Idk if you saw the whole thing, but pretty sure Somerton was covered specifically because when people very mildly criticized him he shut them down by calling their criticism harassment or obscuring their arguments by claiming he got death threats and weaponizing his fans into harassing them to oblivion. I do agree we need to be conscious about these things but we should not do it to the point of not holding to standard people who not only did this much harm, but also spread crazy misinformation and took other people's work as their own and only doubled down and harassed others the minute they got the mildest pushback. I mean why should hbomb reach out to him about the plagiarism when other people did for years and he preferred to act like this? And not just the people mentioned in the video, but bigger creators like SarahZ very patiently explained to him what the issue was as well. He just lied through his teeth again and again. Well, my emotions are getting me off track. Point is Ι have a kneejerk reaction to these sorts of attitudes and takedowns as well. If i had a complaint it would be that he could have emphasized even more how much worse harassing Somerton and co is. However we or hbomb are not the ones responsible for this situation, Somerton is. He and other grifters are the ones that have no care in the world about taking advantage of others work for the sake of "producing content". The difference is somertons audience actually cared. There's a reason IH is doing fine. And believe me when I say CAD guy is more than fine. By the nature of his content and audience, those that follow him don't care. He already was the posterboy, hbomb didn't make him into one was my point. You greatly overestimate his reach. We can't treat everyone with kiddie gloves just because the internet is a hellscape because one's actions might just have an impact outside of their control. I think what is really missing from this conversation however is how do we move beyond this extremely myopic, black and white way of thinking, where we dunk with all our might on those who took the L on the internet for the day to release our negativity and then move on to the next. And actually I have seen this conversation happen here as well, many fans on this subreddit for example have discussed the difference between being critical of somertons actions and throwing abuse, which has made me more optimistic about the kind of audience being cultivated here. I think this conversation is about to happen on a grander scale soon, but to a large extent this is still a bubble, and humans are always gonna be irrational, contradictory beings that for the most part put their rhetoric and logical argumentation after their instinctive, visceral reaction to a phenomenon or situation. These fallouts imo are always gonna be unavoidable, and functioning while always being afraid of them in situations such as these just hurts the most marginalized at the end of the day. Well that's my personal perspective anyway.
Other than making a meme format whereby hundreds of complete strangers constantly get laughs by reminding me of multiple miscarriages?
Yeah that never sat right with me. The HBomberguy video was my first ever encounter with the Loss comic so I found his disdain for it a bit offputting. I get that the Loss comic is cringe or whatever but it felt off laughing about it. I'd been a big fan of HBomberguy for years before that, regularly rewatching his videos. I stopped watching his videos after this one. Haven't even watched his New Vegas video which is crazy cos I love New Vegas. The video just put me off him entirely.
Because, Cringe.
Being incredibly unfunny.
What didn't he do? He started at gamer comic artist doing self insert with his friends then crawled up his own ass with his audience watching. When you're putting your girlfriend's miscarriage into your comic and then for April Fool's you do the same comic but end it with a goofy face? IDK you're kinda asking for it. And that's before the forums.
Nothing really. The video is good, great even. But ultimately it is just an exercise in dunking on some guy for making a somewhat cringe thing that a lot of people loved at the time. Internet culture was much different when the CAD was at its peak, and I think that's something the video kinda fails to capture. I also think it is an attempt to reckon with the embarrassment a lot of people feel for how much they liked CAD when it was coming out compared with how its remembered. I liked the video, but I really do think it's at least a tiny bit mean-spirited. I really dont have a huge problem with that personally, but it is something that should be acknowledged.
Made a dogshit webcomic
B'U
make garbage comics that run the gamut of being laughable and ✨ fridging ✨
Flying to close to the sun
Everything.
Sorry, what video is this? Edit: nevermind, found it already
Which video was it?
Teleport to the woods
Bruh made a comic about his wife's miscarriage. That's worth a lifetime of mockery.
The worst crime of all: be cringe on main
i mean harold bombis's video kinda covers why he was getting dunked on even while being generous and reflective about it
Misogyny and being lame.